


Every New Beginning is Another Beginning's End

by AntivanCrafts



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: FWP, M/M, as of the time this story takes place anyway, both boyfriends and not boyfriends, flirting without plot, it is the ship of dreams, shrodinger's boyfriends, snarky double entendres abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 00:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7596586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntivanCrafts/pseuds/AntivanCrafts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>closing time on the promenade, and everything slows down except laughter amid the glass</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every New Beginning is Another Beginning's End

Closing time at Quark's always carried with it a low, steady thrum of expectation, or so Garak had found. A sort of delayed gratification, far more than at his own place of business. Quark's, Quark's presence, carried with it a particular undercurrent that reminded him very much of waiting for a fight to break out, but- no. Perhaps more pleasant than that, he decided after watching Quark nudge a dozing customer up and moving, but admittedly, he did not have much experience with such things. It was certainly a more immediate sort of sensory awareness than that. Though he had long been too disconnected from what those very senses were telling him to puzzle it out. Still, it provided a pleasant enough distraction while he waited for the sink to fill behind the bar, Rom a distant presence he found impossible to ignore. The ferengi was quiet enough, save for his humming, and Garak dismissed him as an immediate threat, though the kinks in his scales did not settle until Rom had moved out from behind him and took the stairs to the apartments above. Even then, his nerves still jangled enough to set his back teeth on edge, but it was easy enough to push it back to its accustomed place as he looked up to see Quark approaching with a tub of glasses. Easy enough to drop his shoulders to a more relaxed posture in a move he didn't even consciously register anymore, save to raise ridged brows until Quark snorted. "What?"

"Nothing," Garak said in his most innocent tones, which of course earned him a snorted laugh.

"Really."

"Truly," he said, bending his head to give it a slow shake as he started to fill the sink with dirty glasses and plates and assorted cutlery for a dozen species. "So suspicious of my motives, Quark. One could start to think that you suspected me of trying to grasp beyond my reach." A tad clumsy, perhaps, but it got him another laugh, a true one, one that eased out the last itching beneath his scales until he found himself laughing back. It was short, his smile tight, but Quark didn't seem to mind. He never did. Had, in fact, a particularly forgiving nature, one that sometimes made Garak's blood pound too fast in his ears.

Deliberately looking away from Quark's smile, he bent to scrub out a tall, fluted glass he himself had used earlier in the evening. How truly regretful that even a fine glass of kanar stained the dishwater a muddy russet that foamed and left a gritty residue, if you didn't wash it away fast enough. Snorting, he shook off a leaf of greenery that clung to the edge of one glass and passed it to Quark, who rinsed it out and set it up to hang. They passed a pleasant enough time this way, as had become their custom. He supposed that Quark could have had Rom or Nog finish up the washing before he came by every evening, but there always seemed to be a mountain of crockery and a mountain of words to climb and excavate, relishing in each new discovery. He would certainly never say so aloud (not unless the potential gains outweighed the losses, a bit of mental arithmetic both he and Quark had learned in no school), but it was. Soothing, to have a routine, to know to expect a face at the end of his day that had no expectations of him in turn, save that he arrive alive or close to it, as was the case with Julian. Bit by bit, the ache in his hands from a day of too chill temperatures faded beneath the welcome heat of the dishwater, and with it went the last lingering bit of tension in the corners of his smile.

As if on cue, Quark picked up the thread of a conversation from earlier that morning, when he had been in the middle of telling Garak about a former employer of his.Giving a snort, Garak leaned against the bar, the slow curve of his smile deeping at the downward flicker of Quark's eyes before they both resumed washing glasses. "You never did say," Garak drawled, "just what you learned from the experience."

"Of having a boss? Several of them?" Quark's voice was low with amusement and something that made him slow his motions so that their hands brushed together, were tangled by pinkies and words left unsaid.

"Perhaps start with the first of them, and slower, if you please."


End file.
